The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing, redundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped up – flaked up, with rose-water snow. — Herman Melville
We stayed at Marina Pez Vela in Quepos for just one night and then left at first light for the long day sail to Bahia Drake, Osa Peninsula.
Mom found a perch on the way from Quepos to Drake Bay.
We dinghied up the Estuary for a mile until we hit some mini rapids. I swam back (crocodiles? no se!)
We walked back toward the village of Bahia Drake from the estuary.
Drake Bay, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica
Fishermen hand-lining for ??
Our late afternoon swim.Underway! Another 60nm+ day sail from Drake Bay to Puerto Jimenez, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica.Comfy perch.Two humpbacks came pretty close to Allora, surfaced a couple times and then sounded. Brief but sweet visit.
First evening in Puerto Jimenez.Muy elegante.A three toed sloth.Capuchin monkey (we saw Squirrel monkeys, Howler Monkeys, and Spider Monkeys as well)
Scopin’ it out.
SUPYep, I made ’em do it again.
Our guide, Rudolpho.Lotta love there.Over achiever?
This is how it works in Central America: I went over in our kayak to ask these folks where the closest market might be. Within seconds, they were offering to take me via motorcycle or car, my choice. I let them know I had to return to the boat first to get my shopping bags and money and they patiently waited for the hour or so it took me to make it back. Jorge took me (the car was my pick, as I wanted to get too much stuff for a pista) and waited while I shopped. He loaded all the groceries and whisked me back to Bahia Rincon. Since I still had to get the goodies to the boat, they loaded this panga and paddled all the way over and proceeded to help offload them. Crazy generosity. Beautiful world.Mod new snorkeling masks. Mom’s first time EVER!Namo (our dinghy) gets us to and fro with relative ease. The 9.9 horsepower engine moves 4 ppl. much slower than 2, but we get there.
Mom slept on the foredeck for some moonlight and fresh AIR!These afternoon swims are a ritual!
Trudy, the maestra of the garden Casa Orquideas. She and her husband started the farm 42 years ago.
Lipstick Palm.
Graham and his wife, Jill have been friends with the owners and coming to help annually (from England) for many years.
Foredeck cruisin’
Fish Hook Marina, Golfito.Bésame Mucho.They both pitched in and helped clean up from a salt water ingress in the foreword sink. Gracias team MAMAS!How could Mom resist this BLUE margarita on Valentine’s day?!
Homemade fishing lures! Dorado beware!This was actually one of the chair options at the Golfito airport!Goodbyes are so hard.We’ll get them out to visit soon!You can tell we’re not REALLY smiling.
Our hearts ache without our GREM!! BUT, (and this is a pea sized consolation) – there is quite a bit more space aboard s/v Allora! Haley was going back to March in the DC rally and Maddi was off to India, so we had to release them!! Having been more leisurely with our movements from Mexico to El Salvador, we now realized that our time is getting somewhat crunched, so our pace has to pick up in this next zone, which is regrettable. Weather really dictates many of our ‘should we stay or should we go’ movement decisions and it can be capricious. We’ll get a flavor of Central America; enough to know we could happily come back – on a slower pace.
After saying goodbye to Haley and Madison and this particularly thorough provisioning stop at the market in San Salvador, Marcus said, ‘we could have kept the girls here and just cannibalized them!’ (haha, this way I can tell if they are reading our blog!).The “Marte” – Art Museum in San Sal. Retrospective on El Salvadorian artists; interesting!It’s a messy job to switch the paddle wheel (sensor for measuring our boat speed) which is essentially a hole in the boat which gushes water when we replace the wheel with a temporary plug.Scraping the paddle wheel to rid it of barnacles, which render it unusable as a gauge.We flew our tattered American flag upside down and half mast – and although we saw no one all day, it felt good to make a statement about this particular Inauguration Day, 2017.Gulf of Fonseca, El Sal/Honduras/Nicaragua. We hoisted our brand new, ride side up, American flag on the 21st – in solidarity with the Million Women’s March, 2017!Gulf of Fonseca, where El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua come together (this is an El Sal hill!).El Tigre Island, Honduras, in the morning light, before slipping away toward Nicaragua.Marcus’ first Sierra on the ‘ugly stick’ (trolling rig). He did catch and release one on a fly on Isla Tiburon. It’s one of our new favorites for eating!
Dolphins continue to join us almost every day we sail, but whales have been missed in these waters.Customs Officer, Puerto Capitania and Immigration officers came to us!The other two officials were much more interested in Marcus’ fishing gear!The flag of Nicaragua!
Inside the estuary adj. to Puesta del Sol marina.Puesta del Sol, Nicaragua.Puesta Del Sol, Nicaragua
We took a taxi to the nearby town of Chinandenga to get some cash from an ATM to pay our check in fees. It was low light (late afternoon to sunset) and the driver was quite heavy on the pedal, so we whizzed by idyllic pastoral scenes of a Sunday in a Nicaraguan village. Nicaragua was basically a beautiful blur, as you can see in this smattering of shots from the bumpy cab window:
Loved this! LOTS of folks pulled their rockers out in front of their homes to take in the evening.
Costa Rica!!
Bahia Santa Elena hikes, but the guidebook is OLD, so the jungle has consumed the trails and almost us!Dubbed, ‘Worst hike EVER!!’Not sure what these blossoms are, but they highlighted the verdant hills in Bahia Santa Elena.Turkey vulture’s plea for some compassion?I saw (and smelled) two dead sea turtles on a kayak excursion, hence the healthy turkey vulture population.Bahia Santa Elena, Costa Rica. This anchorage, with zero development, is a gem. It’s almost landlocked, so a Papagayo howling wind can be wreaking havoc on the seas outside and this place sees no more than some chop and wind gusts. REALLY sweet!One of our iPhone anchor alarms. This is the course our boat ran around the anchor all night!We swab the decks (!) every morning there’s dew, to give Allora a nice fresh water rinse.
Bahia Samara, Costa Rica (near Punta Guiones). Big surf area. In this tucked away corner, we had numerous reefs and shoals to deal with to get into a good anchoring position. Here, you can see that our charts are sometimes incorrect, because they have us going over a bunch of rocks when, thankfully, we weren’t. We use other sources, our visual clues (water riffles and breaks over reefs) and radar to piece it all together. It’s tough when the depths are only a few feet more than our keel.Bahia Ballena. Noodling around.Puntarenas is a REAL place. Working boats ply this estuary. We are tied up to a pontoon dock (itself floating and secured by two anchors) with never more than 2.5′ of water underneath us. This morning, if our instruments are correct, Allora was touching the soft mud bottom by 3″. Unnerving. But we are here to check in to Costa Rica and these formalities with the Puerto del Capitaniá, Imigracion and Adouana are proving to be the toughest yet.Our yellow quarantine flag flies as we await the ability to fly our Costa Rican colors.The Customs and Immigration folks came to the boat, but only after we waited for 36 hours or so for them to show up. The yellow, quarantine flag means we aren’t officially cleared into the country yet, and as such, we have to stay aboard Allora.Really?! All THAT for two papers?!Quarantine and Costa Rica flags. Yellow abajo, CR encima!Our view from the floating pontoon at Costa Rica Yacht Club (fancy words for that experience).The pilot boat leads us out of the extremely shallow and shoaling estuary at high tide, around 6:30 pm. Southeast headings and a favorable 1.5 knots of current move us away from the Nicoya Peninsula toward Quepos.Early morning chill accumulates from hours on night watch.Since our destination was only 55nm away (in a straight line), we had the unusual focus of trying not to move too quickly – to avoid arriving at night. The winds cooperated and we sailed sweetly and slowly along, splitting the night into just two 4.5 hr. shifts between us. Lovely sail. Sunrise and a cup of Central American bourbon coffee (just the name of the bean, no actual bourbon!); perfect setting to clean our dusty fans underway.Our needs come in bike sized packages! Provisioning for southern Costa Rica with the Mamas.Marina Pez Vela, Quepos, Costa Rica. This newish marina caters mainly to sport fisherman and is charging the highest rate we’ve seen on this journey! It costs us $180. a night for a slip here. SO … we scooted away for a couple nights (2/4 & 2/5/17) anchoring off Manuel Antonio National Park. By 4pm when the park closes, we have this lush backdrop all to ourselves.
Capuchin Monkey mama and baby
That’s a sloth in the center of the pic!!Marcus was relieved that wasn’t the spot we chose to land our dinghy – although our effort wasn’t uber smooth and I walked around in salty clothes all day!
Parasailers at sunset, with the anchorage at Manuel Antonio Park all to ourselves!
